Ecca collection

Aluminium Centrum

Few buildings evoke the universal response ‘how on earth does it stand up?’ but the Aluminium Centrum in Houten, the Netherlands, is one of them. A flat simple slab of a building (although not as simple as it first looks) is supported on the slenderest possible of supports coming up out of the water. On a day when the light is right, with reflections in the still water, the effect is of the tentacles of a jellyfish – not the most structurally rigid of concepts.

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Residential Project Praam

While its clean, rectilinear profile and abundant glazing, the Praam residential building is very much what one might expect of IJburg, an artificial archipelago on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Designed by Eindhoven-based architects Marx & Steketee, the Praam is part of a rather old-fashioned and surprisingly intimate style of urban development.

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School Het Perron

Educational theories seem to be one of the fastest changing areas of modern life, as educators struggle to help young people fit themselves to our evolving and challenging world. How then can an architect design a building that will stand for at least 30 years, and accommodate change of which we have not even dreamed?

Images courtesy of ZEEP architecten Amersfoort, Sigrid Schaap, Mark van den Boorn

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